Tectonics
by Timesprite
Summary: (Cable, Domino) Beneath the surface...


Disclaimer: Marvel owns them, I don't.  
  
Notes: This is set before and after the 'Underground' arc in Weapon X (#7-13). You don't really have to have read that to read this... it wasn't very good, and doesn't actually weigh much on the story. Hell, this isn't even a very good fic, so there you go. Rated, uh... PG, I suppose.  
  
Tectonics  
  
by Timesprite  
  
Under the fluorescent lights, he thinks as he approaches, she looks terrible. Not in the fleeting bad-day sense of 'terrible,' but on a much deeper level. Tired and worn, like she's been ground between shifting continents. It's in her posture if not her face, which has become much as it was a decade ago, unlined and too young. Nothing about her screams youth, though, and he thinks the world must have been horribly unkind these last few years.  
  
He has on various nights, lying on his back as he stares at the ceiling, wondered what became of them. Not the simple answer of course--he knows in his head what happened, she walked away--but on some deeper level. Things like that don't shatter in an instant, after all. There must have been a crack there before that allowed them to be fractured like they were. Split apart with a gulf yawning between them wide as the Grand Canyon. He will always wonder whose fault it was.  
  
Bad pun, he thinks tiredly as she catches sight of him, straightens up, smooths out the book she's been reading. He watches the entire show as he takes his time, crossing the worn carpet of the concourse in slow strides, single bag hanging like a weight from his hand. He can see her physically gathering herself up to face him. This will not be, after all, as simple as a telephone call.  
  
She's thinner than he remembers--a troublesome thought, because it means that he hasn't been the only one mired in a personal hell--he can see written all over her that she's suffered as well.   
  
"I didn't pull you away from anything, did I?"  
  
"Nothing important." Just six months of unrepentant self-destruction that hadn't made him feel any better, in the end. In the end, only her voice over the telephone asking him for help had made him sit up and look around in disgust. He takes her hand and pulls her to her feet. It feels strange, touching her in such a benign way, when the last time he saw her she'd been trying to kill him. He drops her hand quickly as she gathers her own belongings.  
  
Over coffee, she unravels her tale. It is one he is all too familiar with, though that does not dampen his anger one bit. He finds he's just so tired of it all. He thinks she must be, as well. There's a weariness to her voice and her posture, and the softer light of the cafe has not improved her appearance at all. The silences between them are the awkward pauses of former lovers, not quite sure how they came to be that way. It wasn't a parting of choice, but rather one of circumstance. Still, too much time has past and the distances grown too wide to remedy.   
  
He wonders if her thoughts mirror his own, or whether her mind is focused solely on the business at hand. He finds himself looking for that spark they used to have, the friendship that mattered above all else. The thing that made them perfect partners. He thinks that if she smiled--the way she *used* to--he'd feel something again.  
  
She has not smiled. Her eyes, which used to be warm, are now as cold and unfeeling as the gemstone they so resemble, reflecting nothing.  
  
----  
  
"You look like shit, you know. S'pose heading a cult takes a lot out of a man, hm?"  
  
He stares down into his glass. They've left the cafe behind, and with it the coffee. Nothing now but alcohol and uncomfortable silences. He glances at her, the way she's slouched in the chair, her hair in her eyes--he hates it short and always has--and shrugs. "Don't like your haircut," he says, just to see her reaction. He's fast coming to realize he doesn't really know who she is anymore. Oh, she's still Dom, but there are little things he's noticing that are all wrong. She's much colder now, and there's a hell of a lot more distance to her than there ever was before. She runs her hand through her hair, leaving it in disarray.   
  
"Well, it's not for you to like, is it? The buzz cut looks stupid on you, by the way."  
  
"Thanks." Disarray. That's it. She's chaos now. Her thoughts and actions are shifted, something to the left of what she should be. He doesn't like it at all. "You were working for Xavier." It's a nonsequitur, and if the fact that he knows this information surprises her, it doesn't show. She waves a hand languidly, dark eyes half closed.  
  
"For awhile. He was using me."  
  
"And you didn't use him back?"  
  
"Of course I did." She reaches into the pocket of the coat she's slung over the back of her chair, comes up with a cigarette and a lighter. The frown crosses his face before he can stop it. "Hey, my apartment. My rules, alright?"  
  
"Always looking for new ways to die, aren't you?"  
  
"Oh, fuck off. I didn't call you so you could read me the riot act."   
  
"I know." And it is none of his business, really. Any claim he might have had was forfeited a long time ago. He let her walk away. This is just business, and he doesn't really want to argue with her. It won't accomplish anything. He refills his glass and contemplates it for a moment. "How have you been?" He glances up, seeing her expression blank.  
  
"Fine, Nate." She's holding in a sigh; she knows how big a lie that is.  
  
"You don't look fine."  
  
"Neither do you."  
  
He nods in acknowledgement. "Spending six months looking for life's answers at the bottom of a bottle will do that to a man," he replies, and the honesty of that statement registers on her face. She pulls away.  
  
"I'm not doing this." She grinds the cigarette into an ashtray and stands up. "The couch folds out."  
  
And then she's gone.  
  
The couch is uncomfortable--a bar beneath the thin mattress presses into his lower back and it is too small to accommodate his height. He lays awake, hearing the sounds of traffic outside, wondering if she is really asleep. He could find out--it would take the barest flicker of his power, but he doesn't trust himself anymore. He takes a deep breath instead, meditating to a calm he doesn't really feel, deep down. He hasn't felt calm in a very long time. He hears a soft 'thump' from the bedroom and knows now that she doesn't sleep--insomnia has the better of her, and things have not really changed that much after all. He wants to say something to her, and knows he doesn't have the words.   
  
He drifts to sleep, images he spent six months drowning out flicker like candle flames before his sleeping mind, bringing him awake in fits and starts, though his exhaustion always reclaims him.   
  
----  
  
In the cold grey glow of a wintry Chicago morning, he hears her moving around the kitchen, heedless of the noise she makes. It is early--the glare of a nearby clock shows it is just past six, and he feels certain that she slept even less than he did. She would not be up at this hour unless that were the case, and he considers closing his eyes and pretending he sleeps still.  
  
"There's coffee."  
  
He turns his head to the side and she's standing there, watching him critically with her arms folded protectively in front of her, as if she's unsure now why she brought him there. As if she's uncomfortable with his presence now. He pushes himself upright. "Do you want me to go?" Because there is no point, if they cannot work together.  
  
"No. I--" She shifts slightly, drops her arms. Does her best to adopt a neutral posture. "No hard feelings, right?"  
  
He would never have thought such a simple question could hurt. But it does, because it's another symptom. She doesn't trust him. Or, at the very least, she thinks she should be wary with him. "We.... didn't part on the best terms," he hedges. The conversation could remain benign, or it could explode in his face. But with Dom, at least, it's nothing new.  
  
"I had to go," she replies, looking away from him. "And I shouldn't have yelled at you." She pauses. "I tried to kill you."  
  
He shakes his head. "It wasn't you."  
  
"No," she admits. "But it knew me. The things it said..."  
  
"Weren't the truth."  
  
She sighs. "No, they were. That's just it. That thing told the truth."  
  
"Okay." There's no point in arguing it, anyway. "I'm not mad at you," he adds.  
  
"Yeah." She shrugs. "So you still want to do this?"   
  
And they're back to the mission at hand. He doubts they'll discuss anything else from here on in. "I've got a few ideas."  
  
----  
  
Things do not end the way he has planned. There is a nagging feeling that something has gone horribly wrong, though he has no proof of it. Things are strangely calm now. It is not a good feeling, more akin to standing in the eye of a hurricane, knowing there is more to come than to any feeling of accomplishment.   
  
She is the last to enter the garage, the last to depart the now empty base, slowed as she is by one useless arm. He's been waiting, and he doesn't know why. His gut has been telling him to flee back home. Back to the emptiness and the solitude. But he can't.  
  
"Dom..."  
  
She stops, her single bag poised on her good shoulder, and shakes her head. 'No.' Her hair is in her eyes. Her silence is asking him not to say anything else.   
  
They have been nothing but cordial to one another since this mission began. It was a job. They both worked out their parts in it, orchestrated with skill built up over decades. Almost perfection.  
  
But they have barely spoken, and the weight of all that silence is suddenly crushing.   
  
Silence is all he's had from her. Silence, as he took over what had been her mission, built it into a network with skills gleaned over the long course of his former calling. Silence as he brought Blaquesmith in, though he doubts her dislike for his old mentor has lessened any over the years. Silence--worst of all--as he worked diligently, probing the bloody bullet wound in her shoulder, searching for any lingering traces of the projectile, bandaging her up gently. The stoic look on her face and her dead eyes had nearly done him in. He should have known. Silent is something Domino has never been.   
  
Something is different, and he hasn't been able to see it before now, so caught up has he been in their old, worn out games. The shake of her head brings it all into focus. A warning. And for once in her life, he realizes, she's not been waiting for him to ask her to stay.  
  
And despite it all, he says her name again, because he can't let her do this--he can't let her walk away yet again, and he can't pretend to have better things to do. They have, he thinks, been stubborn and insanely stupid over all of this.  
  
Stupid to deny the need, and stupid to think they had to be stronger than the need. So she shakes her head again, still pleading, eyes still hidden under their veil of black hair and instead of giving to that act of desperation, he walks to her and takes the bag from her hands. Disarms her literally and figuratively, and the walls that have held her silent seem to snap.  
  
"I won't do this."  
  
"Why the hell not?" His voice echoes loudly in the empty shell of a building, surprises them both. He feels a pang of horror as she actually flinches.  
  
"There's no point, Nathan. There's just no point."  
  
"You don't have anywhere to go," he says, "and neither do I."  
  
"And that means what, exactly? It means nothing, Nathan. It's been a long time. Let it go."  
  
He takes a deep breath, owns up to the ache gnawing at him from the inside. "I can't. I need you."  
  
"You always have," she replies dully. "I needed you, Nate, and you didn't have time. I'm tired of staying because you ask me to. This isn't going to work."  
  
He takes hold of her wrist. Small, compared to the size of his hand. Breakable. And he realizes he's been using her--this woman who suddenly seems so small and so vulnerable--to keep his world together. And he's been doing it for years. He pulls his hand away, and he can see in her eyes--suddenly sad--that she knows.  
  
She sighs. "Come and find me when you figure out what you want."  
  
-end- 


End file.
